


after hours

by Metal_Snakes



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Body Horror, from children, im just putting sephiroth through the wringer, traumatizing an 8 year old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26884555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metal_Snakes/pseuds/Metal_Snakes
Summary: Raising a kid in a lab really isn't the safest method when dealing with sensitive minds.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	after hours

Hojo leaves him unattended in his small room for hours at a time. Gives him physics books to look over. Makes him study the structure of cells and understand the human brain. He cleverly hides little doodles on the pages Hojo won’t check. The books are his, and Hojo would not take away his only entertainment. Hojo cannot stand stupidity. 

It’s only occurring now that when Hojo leaves his small chromed room— with its bed nailed to the floor like every other piece of furniture— That the door is always kept unlocked. There’s no way to tell time aside from the comings and goings of the lab assistants and his appointments, but he can assume it’s after hours. Sephiroth finds it odd there is no way to tell time in his own room. 

He looks at his books, closed, and read through five times over. He has nothing to do and Hojo has not been back since early morning. 

The door is open. He steps through. 

The hallways are illuminated not by the fluorescents, but by an eerie green. He’s never been out this late. There are no orderlies fluttering around; the only noise is the air conditioning and the faint whir of machinery. 

He’s nearly 8 by now, weirdly lanky like he’s growing a little too fast for his body to reasonably keep up with. The shadows he casts on the walls are long. 

He keeps walking down the hallway, one of the observation rooms is open. It’s the source of the green light. He’s never been in this room before, always walked or wheeled right past it. 

Creeping in, checking for any stray lab assistant. When finding none, he edges in farther. He wishes he hadn’t. In front of him lie several mako tubes, all fit for human containment. Children lie inside. 

Faces indistinct, but the hair is what sets them apart. Piebald between silver and more natural tones. The skin is all wrong too, he creeps closer and finds that it’s wrinkled and nearly scaled. Veins far too close to the skin, and in some cases, they lie outside. A few of the children have their organs out in the mako, spawned outside rather than inside of their bodies. His eyes dilate and looking at their faces closer than before he finds their eyes are nearly like his. Nearly, if only that most seemed blind or the iris and pupils have torn, rendering them unusable. Most, if not all, are slit like his. 

He’s not sure if they're aware or not until one flicks Its eyes to him. It’s bone-chilling. Looking at a reflection of himself, but not quite. What he could’ve been rather than what he is. A few more twitch and jerk towards him, like his proximity, set something off. 

A lump forms in his throat. He knows he’s not right, but looking at proof of children, nearly homunculi of himself turns his stomach violently. His brows twist and he knots his fingers into the hair that falls to his elbows. Doesn’t hear someone pass the threshold. He’s transfixed on the jerky and slowed movements from the children in front of him. 

A clammy hand is laid on top of his shoulder, gripping just on the side of pain. “Now, boy… what separates you from them?” 

He can’t find it in himself to answer, nor does he know the answer Hojo is looking for. When his silence stretches on too long, he sighs. “You speak when spoken to.” 

“No, I don’t know.” He can’t bear to tear his eyes away. 

“Technically, nothing separates you and them. You are simply a freak genetic mutation we have yet to replicate, but don’t forget you are replicable.” Hojo sounds… he can’t really discern how he sounds. All he knows is that it’s slimy and that he doesn’t want to wish the pain of his existence on anybody else. He wants to shiver in revulsion, but that’d get only disappointment. 

He’s steered back towards his room, hand on his shoulder the entire time. 

The doors are no longer kept unlocked. Sephiroth is no longer bored when books are piled upon one another, no matter that he has read them all, front to back, several times. There is the uncanny awareness that someone is behind the double-sided glass and that they are looking at him. Scrutinizing. 

When he goes older, he likes to look back. Hear their heart race.

There is the oddly comforting thought that nothing could ever be worse than this. Everything would be fine because it wasn’t  _ that.  _

  
  
  
  



End file.
